How to set up your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch

Did you know: FastMail has an excellent iOS app which many of our users prefer to other mail apps. See our mobile app help for more details.

iPhone, iPad and iPod apps needs their own app password to access your information. If you use your normal password or your FastMail two step verification password on an external account, syncing
to an external service won't work and you will see a password error.

The instructions and screenshots in this setup guide are for iOS 10. Previous versions of iOS are similar, although the screenshots will not match what you see on your device.

My mail isn't showing up at all

My folders show as subfolders of my Inbox. How do I fix this?

This is for clients using the old mail.messagingengine.com server only. This issue is fixed if you're using imap.fastmail.com

The default settings used by iOS for FastMail accounts shows all folders other than the system ones (Archive, Sent, Trash etc.) as subfolders of the Inbox, even though they should be at the same hierarchical level. To fix this:

Open the Settings app.

Tap Mail.

Tap your FastMail account in the Accounts list. It will be labelled with whatever you typed in for the Description field when you set it up.

Your FastMail contacts will now sync with your phone and are ready to use; open the Contacts app to view and edit your contacts.

Note: This will sync all CardDAV accounts by default (both personal and shared). If you want to sync them separately, create individual CardDAV accounts. Use the same server name and password, but set the username to select the specific address book:

personal contacts: <username>+Default@<domain.tld>

shared contacts: <username>+Shared@<domain.tld>

Be aware that any pre-existing contacts already on your device do not automatically get copied back up to FastMail with the sync: you need to import them to FastMail first.

Set up notes

Open the Settings app.

Tap Notes.

Under Accounts, select your FastMail account from the list if you have already added it for email, calendaring or contacts. Or add it now following the email instructions.

Enable the Notes option.

You can now verify it's working in the Notes application.

Open the Notes app

There will be an option at the top to back to the Accounts list.

You will now see a list of places where your Notes are stored and select which set of Notes you want to view.

If you'd like to use FastMail storage as the default location for new notes to ensure they are backed up and always available:

Updating your password

Depending on what kind of access the app password granted (just mail; or mail and calendars; or mail, calendars, contacts) affects which passwords you will need to update in your phone. Note that access to Notes is controlled by your Mail password.

For Mail (and Notes):

Open the Settings app.

Tap Mail.

Tap your FastMail account in the Accounts list. It will be labelled with whatever you typed in for the Description field when you set it up.

Tap Account, and scroll down to the "Incoming Mail Server" section.

Tap to focus the Password field, delete the current contents and type in your new iPhone app password..

Now tap scroll down to the "Outgoing Mail Server" section and tap the first (and probably only) entry, called something like SMTP smtp.fastmail.com.

Tap the first entry, smtp.fastmail.com, under the "Primary Server" heading.

Tap to focus the Password field, delete the current contents and type in your new password.

Tap Done, then go back to Account then tap Done again.

You should be able to both send and receive mail again with your FastMail account. If you can do one, but not the other, try following the steps again carefully: your password may have been updated for incoming mail, but not for outgoing mail, or vice versa.

If you have your calendar set up on your device, you will need to update the password there as well:

Open the Settings app.

Tap Calendars.

Tap your FastMail calendar account in the Accounts list at the top. It will be labelled with whatever you typed in for the Description field when you set it up.

Tap Account, then tap to focus the Password field, delete the current contents and type in your new password.

Tap Done.

For Contacts:

Open the Settings app.

Tap Contacts.

Tap your FastMail contacts account in the Accounts list at the top. It will be labelled with whatever you typed in for the Description field when you set it up.

Tap Account, then tap to focus the Password field, delete the current contents and type in your new password.